Pakistan Christian Children Sold as Slaves to Fund Islamic Militants

A leading member of a militant Islamic organisation based in Pakistan is funding its activities through the sale of Christian children into slavery, according to a Christian persecution watchdog group.

The militant Islamic organisation, Gul Khan, is said to abduct children between the ages of six to twelve from their homes in remote Christian villages in the Punjab and incarcerate them in deplorable conditions until they are sold, report the Barnabas Fund. Children supposedly sold into the sex trade or a life of domestic servitude sell for about US$1,700 each. The group reported that two Christian missionaries – one Pakistani, the other American – helped expose the slave trafficking after seeing photographs of boys for sale on the black market in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

The missionaries reportedly devised an elaborate and risky rescue plan where the Pakistani missionary posed as a Lahore businessman who wanted to buy boys to beg for him. The plan is said to have succeeded and the missionaries managed to buy back twenty boys and return them to their homes. Barnabas Fund said they were also able to film a member of the militant Islamic group Jamaat-ud Daawa (JUD) accepting money for 17 boys.

“The revelation of this horrifying trade in Christian boys to fund Islamic terrorism is an extreme manifestation of the discrimination and oppression of Christians in Pakistan,” said Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, the International Director of Barnabas Fund.

“The classical teachings of Islam on the second class status of non-Muslims (called dhimmi) create an attitude of contempt towards Pakistan’s Christian minority which is seen in a whole raft of daily discrimination, injustice and humiliation.”

According to Barnabas Fund, the children are beaten savagely, only fed once a day and ordered not to talk, play or pray.